I often hear talk that government regulations are always screwing everything up, infringing on peoples rights to decide if they want to act of a safer manner, make money etc…
http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/27/pf/jobs/crab-fishing-dangerous-jobs/index.htm?source=cnn_bin
It appears when it comes to commercial fishing, the ”nanny state” regulations dramatically decreased deaths while making it more profitable.
I guess regulations arent always as terrible as talk radio would have me believe.
One thing I have noticed after being in places like India, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines is that there has to be a balance between regulations and a free for all. It’s nice to think that everything would be so much better without regulations but that’s not always true.
I rode on a boat that was so overloaded they were pumping water as we went. There were no life jackets and they kept letting people pile in. Then I would see a family of 6 riding on a motorcycle going full speed. I see things almost everyday that makes you shake your head but without any form of regulations in place, people will do what is convenient and cheap for them without any concern of the consequences to others. It would be far from nirvana.
I often hear talk that government regulations are always screwing everything up, infringing on peoples rights to decide if they want to act of a safer manner, make money etc…
http://money.cnn.com/...x.htm?source=cnn_bin
It appears when it comes to commercial fishing, the ”nanny state” regulations dramatically decreased deaths while making it more profitable.
I guess regulations arent always as terrible as talk radio would have me believe.
What “nanny state” regulations decreased deaths? The article attibutes the change to a change in how quotas are given out. Previously they were given out to the whole fleet so everyone worked as hard/fast as they could as the season would only last a few days and every available boat was out fishing whether it was safe or not.
Now they are given out to individual boats, and captains can sell them to other boats. There is no longer a rush which leads to unsafe practices and a much smaller fleet of larger safer boats fishes the waters for a 3 month period.
So this was a change in regulations, not additional regulations that led to better safety. If anything it is less regulation, as it allows the free market to work and the biggest safest boats end up buying the quotas of unsafe boats. Basically a win for all and a safer situation.
If you are going to give an example of “nanny state” regulation at least find something some one might consider nanny state. I’d be surprised, if fishing quotas would fall under anyones definition of “nanny state” regulation.
One thing I have noticed after being in places like India, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines is that there has to be a balance between regulations and a free for all. It’s nice to think that everything would be so much better without regulations but that’s not always true.
I rode on a boat that was so overloaded they were pumping water as we went. There were no life jackets and they kept letting people pile in. Then I would see a family of 6 riding on a motorcycle going full speed. I see things almost everyday that makes you shake your head but without any form of regulations in place, people will do what is convenient and cheap for them without any concern of the consequences to others. It would be far from nirvana.
Absolutely. I often wonder how the libertarian types on here think things like this will resolve themselves. I don’t want the streets in America to resemble the ones in Delhi. And then there’s the litter. My god, the litter. I took a train from Delhi to Shimla (in the Himalayas) and I’ve never seen so much garbage beside the train. Truly disturbing.
What “nanny state” regulations decreased deaths? The article attibutes the change to a change in how quotas are given out
Thanks to new government rules,****there has been only one death in the Alaskan crab fishery in the past six years – a significant improvement from the 1990s which saw an average of 7.3 deaths a year, according to Edward Poulsen, director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.
So this was a change in regulations, not additional regulations that led to better safety. If anything it is less regulation
it added regulations and that somehow equals less regulation? i dont see how you make that conclusion
What “nanny state” regulations decreased deaths? The article attibutes the change to a change in how quotas are given out
Thanks to new government rules,****there has been only one death in the Alaskan crab fishery in the past six years – a significant improvement from the 1990s which saw an average of 7.3 deaths a year, according to Edward Poulsen, director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.
So this was a change in regulations, not additional regulations that led to better safety. If anything it is less regulation
it added regulations and that somehow equals less regulation? i dont see how you make that conclusion
Is your reading comprehension that bad, or do you have such an agenda that you can’t think straight?
Per this article, This particular example is simply a change in how fishing quotas are administered. This is not new or more regulation. It is a change, a change that lets market forces determine who gets the quotas. If anything this is more of a deregulation, but I’m will to say it is a change and not less regulation. It is certainly not new or more regulation.
I’m not saying you can’t find regulations that help things, but this is not the case. If you look at the natural state of crab fishing, there would be no fishing quotas and people would fish at a pace that makes sense and it would tend to be safer because they are not working 22 hour days. Then quota regulation was added to to protect the fishing grounds. The way they were doing the quota was a lump sum for the season. all fisherman shared this one number and they had a very few days to catch as much as they could. As the article said, this resulted in unsafe practices and unsafe ships trying to get a piece of the action. Now they changed the regulation to give quotes by boat with options to sell to other boats. This helps eliminate the small unsafe boats because they can sell their quota to larger boats in their fleet. They also have 90 days to get the quota caught so there is less pressure for super long shifts that lead to mistakes.
The quotas protect the fishing grounds, so they are good thing for fisherman, I don’t think this is an example of nanny state regulation.
And then there’s the litter. My god, the litter.
That’s what I don’t get. In most places out of third world litter is everywhere. I can’t count how many times I see people just toss things into the water or from their cars without a second thought. In places like Manila, it is absolutely disgusting and nothing or little is done about it.
There is a strong correlation between the wealth of a country and the litter on the streets.
The quotas protect the fishing grounds, so they are good thing for fisherman, I don’t think this is an example of nanny state regulation.
I think the problem is that different people have different definitions of “nanny state regulation”. A lot of people just seem to use “nanny state regulation” as derogatory term for “regulation I don’t like”. They might have some half-assed rational/ideology to back it up, but I’ve never seen a consistent one.
From the article, it appears that in essence they were simply implementing the system of property rights, based on “use rights,” defined here.
Advocates of free markets have no problem with the basic notion of the government enforcing property rights, including defining their boundaries where there are ambiguities. That’s why the government exists in the first place. In fact, if the government fails to do so, that’s problematic.
I often wonder how the libertarian types on here think things like this will resolve themselves.
The “libertarian types” work out solutions very similar to the one that was actually carried out in this case, and if we’re lucky, we manage to convince the government actually to do it as it did here. See the link in my previous post.
The “libertarian types” work out solutions very similar to the one that was actually carried out in this case, and if we’re lucky, we manage to convince the government actually to do it as it did here. See the link in my previous post.
I’m all for maintaining acceptable pollution levels in a fair and economically efficient manner. The examples provided in the link still requires significant regulation though (i.e., the government has to be able to enforce regulation it won’t just magically happen because company XXX wants to keep the air clean). Further, the regulators can accurately determine the sources of the pollution and how it reaches environmental receptors. This is not always feasible and is much more complicated than many realize and further even if possible may be more expensive than other effective measures. For example, the author in your post hates scrubbers. Acid rain is very complicated and at this point all we know for sure is that installing scrubbers on coal power plants has helped alleviate the problem. There’s no easy way to say how much SO2 is acceptable and allocate emissions appropriately.
I take issue with this for a couple reasons.
First they are describing a situation that was dangerous, I.E. “Derby Fishing” that was in fact created BY regulation. Due to quota’s, fishing seasons etc etc it was the regulations themselves that had created the dangerous conditions to start with. To that end I would view this somewhat like Patf, not increased regulations causing better conditions, but simply altering the regulation themselves.
Second we are talking about a situation of regulation of a system that would not necessarily exist under conditions without regulations. I.E. more a question of ownership and property. Who owns the ocean and how. If indeed someone owned a chunk of the ocean there would be no reason for them to “Derby fish” and this would not have been an issue to begin with.
How you’d set up a system of ownership of vast amounts of the ocean is another question all together.
But in short, IMO, the lack of ownership lead to a need to “Regulate” because making money off of something you have nothing invested into becomes an issue because destroying the capital is no longer an issue. I.E. fish/crab till everything is gone and move on. The regulations were created to stop the over fishing. The regulations caused derby fishing. Altering the regulations does not mean there were more regulations and “That is good” it simply means bad regulation was replaced with better regulation which happens all the time.
~Matt
I’m all for maintaining acceptable pollution levels in a fair and economically efficient manner. The examples provided in the link still requires significant regulation though (i.e., the government has to be able to enforce regulation it won’t just magically happen because company XXX wants to keep the air clean).
Depends on just what you mean by the term “regulation.” Should the enforcement of property rights be classified as “regulation”? In the past, I’ve used the term “regulation” to refer to interventionary action–i. e., government action that went beyond upholding the market through the enforcement of property rights. But others here have disagreed with my usage. Since I don’t really want to get into another such semantic argument, let’s just say that if you include property rights enforcement under the rubric of “regulation,” then yes, the government is going to have to “regulate” in order to have a free market, but if you don’t include it, then no, you don’t need “regulation” to have a true free market. Under the former definition, some regulation is fully consistent with libertarian principle; under the latter definition, it isn’t.
Either way, you’re definitely right in thinking that free markets don’t “just magically happen” and that positive government action is required. With the exception of a few weird anarcho-capitalists, libertarians recognize that.